


coming up only to hold you under

by barelypink



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Angst, DLJ Park Prompt, Future Fic, Grief, M/M, Mother/Son, Other, park benches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 13:33:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21137519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barelypink/pseuds/barelypink
Summary: Two people go to a park and have a nice chat.But it’s not nice. It’s the opposite of nice.





	coming up only to hold you under

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RhetoricalQuestions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhetoricalQuestions/gifts).

> RhetoricalQuestions said they wanted to see what I'd write for this prompt. But maybe they'll regret that now. 
> 
> I posted fluff this morning and now bring you some angst. It's October y'all; it's full of contradictions! Skipped lunch to write this so it's barely edited and probably riddled with errors. I've never written anything so quickly, so if we just want to pretend this never happened, I'm cool with that too. I flagrantly pilfered from both Band of Horses and Hamilton. [Though LMM stole the line in question straight from Alexander Hamilton himself so maybe it's just in the public domain now? I don't actually know how these things work.]
> 
> Title taken from "The Funeral" by Band of Horses.

Two people go to a park and have a nice chat. 

But it’s not nice. It’s the opposite of nice. It’s whatever the word is when your heart has been ripped out of your chest but is still beating in your trembling hands because it doesn’t yet realize it’s been broken, doesn’t yet realize he’s gone. 

“What are we going to do without...?” the man asks but his throat closes before he can finish. 

The woman clutches her soft but worn hands in her lap and fiddles with the ring that has graced her left hand for 40 years. She’s no more wiser than the son she raised. She’s never lost someone she loves--loved--so much either. 

“Do you remember the time Dad was teaching me how to play baseball and he broke the window, but he blamed it on me?” the man asks suddenly. The ghost of a smile is etched onto his tear-stained face, the past tense now more true than the present. 

The woman nods and urges her heart to pump again, if just for a few minutes longer. If not for herself then at least for him. She gives what she thinks is a smile, but it feels foreign, unnatural, like her muscles have forgotten how after decades of too much heedless use.

“He bought you a Blue Jays jersey before you were even born. He couldn’t wait until you were big enough to hold a bat.” 

“Yeah,” the man sighs. He looks to the sky and exhales slowly, counting each throb of his too big, bruised heart. He notices now how the light shimmers through the tree branches overhead, how the veins of each leaf are exposed by the sun, a thousand tiny fossils already in the making. He looks at everything in the park, everywhere but at the looming hospital across the street. 

The woman clears her throat and tries to speak. “I remember he came to pick me up at the airport. I can’t even remember where I had been.”

“Winnipeg. Visiting Aunt Marie,” the man replies. He knows this story better than his own heart.

“That’s right. So I get off the plane and your dad picks me up. Says we’re going to go out for a fancy dinner, but he’s so anxious that he proposed to me right there in the airport parking lot. I didn’t hear what he said because the roar of the airplanes was too loud. I didn’t even know what I had agreed to until he pulled out the ring.”

She touches the ring again. It’s been there 40 years. And it’ll stay there another 40 years if she has any say in the matter.

The man thinks about his husband and how he was well into his 30s before he heard “I love you” regularly, before he could say it back with anything bordering on confidence. But the man's whole childhood is papered with I love yous, just a never-ending fountain of parental adoration and encouragement. He’s been buoyed by it his whole life and doesn’t yet know if he can swim without it, doesn’t know if he’ll falter and drown without his father watching over him from higher ground.

He looks to the woman, so soft and worn but quickly fading. She’s been the best of wives and best of women. The absolute best of moms. 

The man tells himself lies about how he'll call her more often, every day, just to check in, and how he and his husband will spend every holiday in the home that was once theirs and that will now be just hers. He grabs the woman's hand and squeezes. It feels so much more delicate than he ever remembers it being. When did she get this old? When did he?

She covers the man's hand with her other one. “My sweet boy.” Their heads bow together in prayer, in grief.

A shadow stretches across them, blocking the light. The man looks up and the pain he feels is suddenly dulled, softened by the look he sees reflected in his beautiful husband’s face. 

David, all in black, just as he always is. And Patrick realizes for the first time that at every occasion, David is ready for a funeral. He sucks in a breath. 

“Patrick, Marcy,” David says, breathless with hope, “Come quick. He's awake.”

**Author's Note:**

> "Best of wives and best of women" is what Alexander Hamilton wrote to his wife Eliza before he went off to fight the duel that killed him. 
> 
> "At every occasion, I'll be ready for the funeral" is also a line from "The Funeral" by Band of Horses. It was stuck in my head and wouldn't go away. Maybe because I listened to the song on repeat while I wrote this.


End file.
